BLOGATHON 2006 ENTRY #39: In Memoriam

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The reason Loren and I were up in Chico last month was because his mother was in the last stages of cancer. She had been battling it for a couple years now, and by this past June it had consumed most of her body.

When we arrived, she was slipping in and out of consciousness because of the pain and because she was heavily medicated with stuff that didn’t seem to help very much. She was sometimes coherent, sometimes not, though she did recognize who I was when we first got there.

By night time, any trace of who she was had disappeared, and she started to continually moan in pain, even though she was being given heavy doses of pain medication on a very tight schedule. I slept in the home office that night and could hear her moaning from the bedroom.

The following day, when Loren and his father stepped outside for a bit, I sat with her, holding her hand, as she continued to moan. I completely lost it. I had never before been in such close proximity to someone who was suffering so much. And I did not know why it had to be that way, and, as much as I wanted to pretend that I had healing hands, the reality of the situation was too much for me to bear.

Dorothea Schneider was one of the most loving, giving, and vibrant people I had ever met. She truly had a way of looking at life with child-like wonder, and she was always interested in learning new things and making new friends.

Loren and I would often imitate her voice in an exaggerated way, making it high-pitched and enthusiastic, and it made us laugh. But that was the perfect representation of her bright personality. She and Loren’s father accepted me into their family, as their de facto gay son-in-law, before my own family would accept my homosexuality. My mother came around, of course, and she and Dorothea hit it off. My mom now considers Loren her second son.

It’s painful enough to watch someone die. But to watch someone die fighting is even worse. Because you want to fight with them. But you can’t because you know that it’s a losing battle. All you can do is just hold their hand and hope that it makes even the slightest bit of difference.

She passed away the second night we were there. Although her death was devastating, I think everyone was relieved that she was no longer in pain.

Loren and his family are holding up.

He gave me a collectible ceramic dragon that belonged to her. It’s cute. You look at it, and it makes you want to believe in magic.